July 08, 2008
Who Needs the Humanities?
Steve Fuller in Project Syndicate:
We need the humanities only if we are committed to the idea of humanity. If the humanities have become obsolete, then it may be that humanity is losing its salience.
I do not mean that we are becoming “less human” in the sense of “inhumane.” If anything, we live in a time when traditionally human-centered concerns like “rights” have been extended to animals, if not nature as a whole. Rather, the problem is whether there is anything distinctive about being human that makes special demands of higher education. I believe that the answer continues to be yes.
Today, it sounds old-fashioned to describe the university’s purpose as being to “cultivate” people, as if it were a glorified finishing school. However, once we set aside its elitist history, there remains a strong element of truth to this idea, especially when applied to the humanities. Although we now think of academic disciplines, including the humanities, as being “research-led,” this understates the university’s historic role in converting the primate Homo sapiens into a creature whose interests, aspirations, and achievements extend beyond successful sexual reproduction.
What was originally called the “liberal arts” provided the skills necessary for this transformation.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 10:25 AM | Permalink
Comments
We need the humanities only if we are committed to the idea of humanity. If the humanities have become obsolete, then it may be that humanity is losing its salience.
This sounds like the sort of glib nonsense a lazy undergraduate might write for an easy grade. I like to think the TA would notice.
Posted by: D | Jul 8, 2008 9:22:58 PM
Making a heartfelt plea for the Humanities -- on whatever basis -- is not only abject, apologetic and craven, it's bad marketing too. I believe they should be made highly exclusive, and that students should be routinely discouraged from pursuing them on the grounds that they're too difficult for most people. Yes, just really too difficult. Don't let on people don't want the Humanities, adding they're so good for one. Tell them, rather, "You can't have it, and it's bad for you anyway." I mean, blankly refuse to teach them French -- their accents are going to be hopeless no matter what. Tell them that a simple, clear and deep relationship with a poem is just not on the cards for them. That many experiences will not be theirs, even if they want them badly, because it's just not on. That most people oughtn't to be stepping outside their intellectual comfort zone, especially since it leads only to sex when they do. If you want the Humanities to be seen as valuable, don't talk avuncular haliotic rubbish about the subject; instead, hold it back, make them beg for it, and dole it out with great parsimony. It's really, really not for everybody.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jul 8, 2008 10:59:09 PM
Sounds like you apes need to get back into your trees! This man's words (and there are more, if you bother to check the link) are wasted on you lot.
Posted by: George Kennedy | Jul 9, 2008 6:30:23 AM
Elatia... while the optimist in me wants to believe that a good, solid liberal arts education for all can be an antidote to some of the more wretched tendencies of our culture, I then look at my students, 90% of whom cannot and will not engage with philosophy, literature or mythology at any level. They're just there for the grade. This isn't their fault, of course...
Nietzsche probably would have called this the "democratization" of the humanities, and I must admit that I'm beginning to see that my optimism is probably just recycled PR from humanities departments who experience budget-slashes every time policymakers decide students don't need to learn about Chaucer, John Stuart Mill, Voltaire, or Tristan and Isolde.
So I guess my question is: how do we reconcile this tension? How do we keep humanities students elite while keeping humanities departments alive? The question is most, er, salient right now, as the aforementioned slashing is going on all over the continent.
Posted by: Nick Smyth | Jul 9, 2008 11:20:36 AM
"That most people oughtn't to be stepping outside their intellectual comfort zone, especially since it leads only to sex when they do"
Now this is an interesting statement.
Posted by: Jared | Jul 9, 2008 11:45:24 AM
Nick,
That's just my point. It has to be very elite before it is seen as desirable again. Telling perfectly bright students that they probably can't learn something because they're simply not up to it, that on top of that, the department is -- necessarily -- so small they couldn't get a place in it or any attention from the top people in it if they did get in, is much more compelling and attractive than wheedling them to come read some Nietzsche with us. My feeling is that Humanities "operatives" have been acting like particularly unsuccessful Mormons knocking on doors for far too long. Our conversion rate is abysmal. It's time to try The Other Thing. Time to actively discourage young people from participating in deep culture going back to the flood myths. Time to tell them they don't need it, that they have in fact too little to bring to it, that they are not more than an ant bearing a grain of rice when it's time to build the Pyramids. When one has nothing to offer a field of inquiry -- no inner reach, no moral life, no deeply cultivated sense of the human spirit -- it's okay to stay away. Like, please stay away. When people are playing chess, after all, who wants to be the one in the room with a Chinese checkers skill set? End of conversation. Yes, it's cruel and snobby. But the opposite approach has failed utterly.
Jared,
If budding technocrats had any inkling that poetry, too, led to sex, they might want poetry. Discouraging them from poetry and sex in the same sentence is an incitement. Some disciplines lead to more sex than others -- you don't want to be putting a young person of limited intellectual gifts in the way of all that without first warning him off.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jul 9, 2008 4:12:46 PM
Elatia,
Cruel and snobbery I have no problem with. In fact, I'm just polishing up a thesis that proclaims the value of cruelty and snobbery. I think I agree with you.
It strikes me that the worst thing about articles like Fuller's is the tacit acceptance of the value-system that's been established by the current economic regime. Hey, look at us, we can make you money, too! Not in the short-term, but still!
Given that a humanities department is supposed to be a place where value-systems are criticized, not passively accepted, this is particularly distasteful and debasing thing to do.
There's an analogue in the current philosophy-science tiff... hard-nosed philosophers and scientists insist that philosophy has to become more "relevant" to scientific practice, but other philosophers (rightly) point out that their job is the active critique of such exhortations.
Posted by: Nick Smyth | Jul 9, 2008 8:09:37 PM
Nick, good luck with that thesis. There oughtta be a new paradigm -- why not that one?
My argument was actually from the point of view of what people in Education Sales (aka Admissions Counseling) might say, just to get an interesting conversation started with their young charges. If that were my job, I would discourage everyone from doing anything interesting, and bend over backwards to help them plan a nice safe life. Before half an hour was up, I'd have gone into pension plans, and would have long been seen as a truly repellent counter-example. It's vital to model excessive caution for the young -- how else will they understand "Carpe Diem?" By watching Robin Williams tell them to go for it? I doubt it. We have reached that point where inspiring teachers and message movies are failing signally to inspire. That means it's time for a little theatre. A little Socratic terror. Perhaps one encourages young minds to live fully by showing them what happens in the absence of that commitment. The true questions students on the verge of a decision need to ask themselves are: Am I too easily led? Have I been conned? And, Which do I prefer -- regret or remorse?
About relevance. People of my parents' generation were discouraged from studying math in college, because the best money for anyone gifted in math and science was to be had by entering medicine. Math was relevant only if you wanted to teach math -- oh, yuck! Fifteen years ago I knew biology students who thought they'd taken a wrong turning, if relevance ($$$) was an issue. That these students were on the cusp of, respectively, computers and molecular biology never occurred even to the in-group gifted enough to see the way. There is a megatonnage of evidence to suggest that relevance is purely notional -- not only not a measuring stick, but purely notional.
If people would pursue what actually interested them -- spoke to them deeply, called them away from what they might learn to recognize as ephemera -- then we would indeed have a new paradigm for relevance. Meanwhile, those of us pursuing what seems a bit eccentric -- the Humanities, that is -- may have to plumb its trangressive appeal in the hope of passing it on.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jul 9, 2008 9:15:55 PM
Elatia,
Agreed again on all counts, but there's an even harsher implication, here:
If people would pursue what actually interested them -- spoke to them deeply, called them away from what they might learn to recognize as ephemera -- then we would indeed have a new paradigm for relevance.
Agreed, but I think we have to recognize this ideal (a person being "called" by a particular field/area) is itself a product of romantic authenticity, a distinct cultural idea of the West. This idea contains a lie so huge that we all kind of maintain a state of doublethink about it: the lie that such an ideal is relevant to a majority, or even to a significant minority of people.
The fact is, most do not feel "called" to anything other than a simple job they can do reasonably well that pays nicely and offers decent benefits. The reorganization of academia (and of the measure of "relevance") we're proposing wouldn't just mean anti-democratic ideals in the university, it would mean setting aside as special a class of social elites whose job it would be to develop and impart visions of the human condition to the unwashed masses, who in turn would be consumers but never producers. Plato is loving this idea, wherever he is.
In its favour, we might say that this is what happens already, except that we lie to millions of mediocre students and tell them that they, too, can actively participate in the institutions of the humanities, when in fact they never will.
Posted by: Nick Smyth | Jul 10, 2008 1:50:54 AM
Studying the humanities at university is a passive endeavor, but a very rewarding one. I never imagined that by studying Shakespeare I would learn to write like him or by listening to Bach I would become a composer. My life, however, has been enriched immeasurably by being exposed to the best in human culture. At the same time, one does have to earn a living, which is why so many English students wind up at teacher's college or law school. Nick, you are right in saying that most people are not "called" to anything and just want a decent job with a good salary and benefits. These are, however, disappearing fast as capitalism concentrates wealth at the top, leaving a shrinking middle class. But this is a different issue. In general, I see nothing wrong with someone getting an undergraduate degree in the humanities and then going for job training in a graduate school.
Posted by: Jared | Jul 10, 2008 9:51:25 AM
Too true, Nick and Jared -- not everyone is bemused. But students who think of adulthood as being anchored in a nice safe job calling for a skill set with a long shelf life still have an enormous number of choices, some more compatible with their deeper natures than others. There are also non-productive hours to take into account when thinking of the rough outlines of a life, and unless those hours are to be dedicated to televised sports events, there are, again, staggering choices to prepare for, even when a student sees leisure as nothing more than down time you fill with whatever. As my philosophy professor used to say, your education is what's left when you've forgotten everything you ever learned. I think the trouble starts when a student conceives of himself as a vessel to be loosely or tightly packed with stuff he must know, there being not a whole lot of room leftover when that's done, instead of as a complex system capable of navigating many areas of competence that enrich one another.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jul 10, 2008 10:23:14 AM
Elatia and Nick, your back and forth about the value of "cruelty and snobbery" reminds me of the war stories I used to hear from students who took Howard Nemerov's writing seminars at Wash. U. in St. Louis in the 80's.
"You can't polish turds!" he would say as he flung a pile of ungraded assignments back at the students. He really seemed to think that literature as an institution was threatened by bad "creative writing." Osip Mandelstam was another such; according to one anecdote , he followed a would-be contributor to his poetry journal onto a streetcar, begging the hapless wannabe to promise to never write another poem, ever.
I'm doubtful of the Nemerov/Mandelstam premise - I'm sure that during the Golden Age of poetry (whenever/whatever that was) tons more bad poetry than good was written. But the bad poets who had enough self-awareness to realize how bad their poems were could appreciate the good ones that much more.
On the other hand, somebody has to be the dragon waiting to be slayed, right?
Or you could just reject the whole dragon/treasure thing and cop a post-punk/DIY attitude: "F*ck you and your f*cking seminar, Mr. Poet Laureate, I don't need your stamp of approval!"
BTW, the best guide to writing /appreciating poetry I've ever encountered is Stephen Fry's "The Ode Less Travelled" - funny, non-pretentious but still packed full of good stuff. It's the only book with "assignments" for the reader that I ever bothered to do. Fry's premise is that learning the mechanics of poetic expression is at least as enjoyable as doing crossword puzzles. And, who knows, you may wind up with something that is more interesting to your fellow humnans than a solved crossword puzzle. At the very least, your pleasure in reading others' poetry will be enhanced. (And yes, Howard, also your pain, but not all of us have to earn our bread reading undergraduate poetry, thank God!)
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Jul 10, 2008 1:04:09 PM
I think there is a confusion here between studying the humanities and studying the Fine Arts like creative writing and music composition and painting. The humanities include literature, history, art history, philosophy - all well worth studying, after which one can go on to a professional school and become something sensible like a lawyer or teacher or librarian.
Then you will be a lawyer, teacher or librarian who has been exposed to Plato, to Da Vinci, to Handel. Only one person in a million is going to become a successful writer or artist or composer, after all. This issue does not need to be "problematized", as they say in grad school.
Posted by: Jared | Jul 10, 2008 1:18:57 PM
Great thread, with valuable comments all round. I would say that the premise that Humanities are in popular decline is not correct if you count the performing arts (acting, cinema etc) as part of the Humanities. Their popularity is strong, although you could argue that these aren't academic disciplines.
But maybe the underlying problem with the Humanities is that they've all been done. Except for nuances, styles and trends, there can't be anything truly new to discover there. Humanities are largely about recording and cherishing the past (which is very important in itself of course)but Science and software engineering, apart from offering job prospects, offer the chance of truly new discoveries and creations.
Posted by: aguy109 | Jul 10, 2008 3:37:34 PM
Funny, Vicki! That observation from Howard Nemerov should be in a frame on the wall of every college admissions counseling office in the West.
Aguy109, nice to see you. But you're wrong. And you're in good company. A couple of years before he died, Richard Feynman said we were reaching the end of the Age of Discovery, that the great scientific questions were largely settled, with those remaining open bidding fair to be settled imminently. He spoke too soon, no? No one ever doubted his genius, only Stephen Wolfram ever ignored his advice, but he spoke too soon. And he would have unsaid those words had he lived another 5 years, I think. I'm only guessing, but that observation always sounded to me like something he needed to believe in the certainty he was soon to die.
Self-deterred from a career as a composer, Nadia Boulanger described the music she wrote in her youth as "unnecessary music." All we can learn from that is that it wasn't necessary to her to write it. Schoenberg, too, gave excessive due to the notion of what kind of music was necessary; maybe the idea that melody was exhausted -- an idea not even math could support -- gave him the lift he needed to do what he had to do. Looking back on it all, was that not about Schoenberg's sense of mission rather than about how fatally run down melody was?
Our own limits make us jaded, and this can be a source of power or a excuse for bailing. When we think we've seen it all, it's upon us to learn to look afresh, not to demand of the Arts that they cease to bore us. For it is art that does the demanding, and ourselves who must be up to it.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jul 10, 2008 5:05:19 PM
What was it that favored the prepared mind? Something... Something...
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Jul 10, 2008 6:02:15 PM
Gee Chris I can't help you there but I do know that it also favors the bold. (or the strong or the brave; depending on how you translate your Virgil)
Posted by: Pete Chapman | Jul 10, 2008 7:50:57 PM
I think Chris means, "God favors the big battalions."
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jul 10, 2008 8:50:38 PM
I think Chris means, "God favors the big battalions."
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jul 10, 2008 8:51:08 PM
Chris,
It is "Chance favors the prepared mind".
Posted by: Jared | Jul 10, 2008 9:54:37 PM
By Louis Pasteur.
Posted by: Jared | Jul 10, 2008 9:59:08 PM
Actually, it may be the student of science who "needs" the humanities the most. For all the reasons that Jared stated.
Posted by: Ruchira | Jul 10, 2008 10:44:44 PM
"A couple of years before he died, Richard Feynman said we were reaching the end of the Age of Discovery, that the great scientific questions were largely settled, with those remaining open bidding fair to be settled imminently."
In his field, this has proved a very astute observation. This has been the least productive time in the study of physics, and essentially nothing of importance has been accomplished after the Standard Model of the 1970's (dark matter, which we haven't a clue about, and some interesting black hole boundary issues the exception).
The illusion of increased knowledge needs some critical analysis (agreed, biology has made great strides), and one would be surprised at the doldrums we, as a species, have entered.
Some of this is masked by the propaganda of "Moores law", and the digital computer "revolution"--
This is just improvement on 1970's technology.
It is true thet String Theory has dominated University physics and funding, and has led us down a path into a box canyon, with notheing to show for it, other than some interesting math.
But we can't blame politics on our pitiful progress.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Jul 10, 2008 11:01:00 PM
Ruchira, but life is short, etc. I would be happy to see scientists learn just enough philosophy, or philosophy of science, not to make silly philosophical arguments about "the real world" quite so easily.
Elatia, might not your "sexy" plan come across as more desperation? Or merely attract a sort of pretentious sub-Byronic romanticism?
Posted by: Sagredo | Jul 10, 2008 11:07:34 PM
Desperation can be very sexy...and no "or" about it. The sub-Byronic romantics will come in droves (and know themselves to be exactly that thanks to their English Lit courses) but it all sounds like way more fun than trying to pass off the humanities as "relevant" chicken soup for the soul.
Posted by: Pete Chapman | Jul 10, 2008 11:49:41 PM
Why do we care about "the humanities" as a category anyway? Surely learning history is quite different from learning French?
Posted by: Sagredo | Jul 11, 2008 1:15:51 AM
Dave, Dr. Feynman was talking about all of it, not just his own corner of it. It's the only preposterous thing he ever said, and would have been preposterous coming from any scientist at any time. But thanks -- that was fascinating.
Sagredo, the Humanities have acted the parts of a wheedling whore and a sweat-drenched shill for as long as I can remember. Oh, let's call it what it is! Let's not buy into that business about the Liberal Arts and the Fine Arts being inclusive and non-intimidating and wholesome when they are instead recumbent, oreficial and -- yes -- desperate. When I was in high school, I got invited to apply to MIT on the strength of something I'd done that they'd noticed -- you can bet it wasn't math or science. They wanted badly to diversify their student body, and, had I gone there, I would have indeed been surrealistically effective in that way. They said so many reassuring things to me that I completely lost interest in what was a novel proposition -- going there. If they had really, really wanted to recruit me, they should have mercilessly pointed out that while I had my strong suits, it was unlikely I could handle the basics of their curriculum -- unless I just liked to work hard. That might have gotten my "I'll show YOU!" response activated. Instead, I completely disrespected them for acting like my worst subjects were fun and easy and my best subjects nothing more than multi-culti buffet for techies. On this cornerstone of bitter personal experience, I base my argument that truth is served by being hugely unpleasant: the Humanities are a dare; the risk is high; do it or don't do it -- see if I care. Now, while this is not exactly sexy, there is a sexual subtext that almost any nerd can pick up on -- that wanting what you can't have is challenging and absorbing, especially when you could have it after all if you tried harder than faint-hearted others.
Pete and Ruchira -- thanks for the reinforcements!
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jul 11, 2008 1:49:34 AM
That Louis Pasteur was a wise man. The point being in the way we look at the value of learning: is it a mere accumulation of "skillsets" we will use between 9 and 5, or the process of development of our entire selves?
The Humanities were certainly intended to meet the latter definition, though today's utilitarian educational model increasingly favors the former. This, I believe, is why Elatia promotes a reverse psychology approach. Tell people they cannot have a rich life, a foundation for wise, creative negotiations with the world, and they will be that much inclined to demand these things, even if it means fighting the contemporary educational paradigm.
It's a form of elitism only in that it recognizes that not everyone will respond, but it doesn't set any inherent limits on who can pursue what the Greeks called the good life.
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Jul 11, 2008 11:32:37 AM
Careful, Elatia. You have a large fan base on 3 QD. I am sure there are many young and impressionable admirers who hang on to every word of yours.
You have invoked sex, snobbery, exclusivity, singleminded pursuits and choice of life's calling all in the same breath. I would like to gently caution readers that being pursued is not entirely a bad thing in love or labor, provided the sentiment is reciprocal.
Posted by: Ruchira | Jul 11, 2008 2:04:48 PM
Aw, Ruchira! How sweet! If anyone likes me, it's because I say what I think in a very Dame Edna sort of way.
Sex, intellectual snobbery, exclusivity, singleness of purpose and a sense of mission have all my student life been attached to Math and the Sciences, in that we truly live in technological culture, with certain status makers as the rewards of ascent, starting in school. If as the French think, students range from "dreamy" to "alert," then the alert are getting a bit under-represented in certain departments. If they could be recaptured by earnestness, niceness, and free oat cakes at Intro to Middle English, the problem would have been solved by now. But copious, frantic outreach has resulted only in greater disrespect and avoidance, it being a law of life that in the absence of self-confidence, one repels precisely whom one seeks to attract.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jul 11, 2008 2:40:08 PM
To make the humanities sexy again, the reverse psychology approach, I think, holds only conceptual promise. It'll work until word is out on the street that admissions counselors everywhere are using reverse psychology as a trick to entice. The response thereafter will be: "eeew, they are stooping even lower, don't f*ing fall for it!" If they use reverse psychology to genuinely deter, how will they respond to the accusation that they helped hasten the day when no Cicero rose among the ranks to defend the Republic.
The best way to entice students to the humanities remains the same as ever: inspire, show what the humanities do for one's inner life, make them "feel its power". Great teachers of the humanities is what it'll continue to take. Trouble is that our technological age, overrun by barbarians pouring out the trapdoors, considers them dispensable. This is a broader fight.
Posted by: Namit | Jul 11, 2008 5:51:28 PM
Ah, the 'broccoli is yummy and no you can't have any' approach. May it succeed!
Posted by: D | Jul 12, 2008 3:07:20 PM
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